Athletics — and sweat — not just for boys anymore

By Maria Anglin :
August 22, 2014

Adding to the legacy of San Antonio Stars' Becky Hammon: She'll be the first woman on an NBA coaching staff.

Photo By Helen L. Montoya / San Antonio Express-News

Photo By San Antonio Express-News

Kacy Catanzaro, the 5-feet-tall woman who made history on "American Ninja Warrior" and who went viral earlier in the month, lives and trains in San Antonio with her boyfriend and fellow Ninja, Brent Steffensen.

Photo By San Antonio Express-News

Kacy Catanzaro, the 5-feet-tall woman who made history on "American Ninja Warrior" and who went viral earlier in the month, lives and trains in San Antonio with her boyfriend and fellow Ninja, Brent Steffensen.

Photo By San Antonio Express-News

American Ninja Warrior Brent Steffensen trains and coaches fellow warrior Kacy Catanzaro. The pair live and work in San Antonio.

Photo By Gene J. Puskar / Associated Press

Kacy Catanzaro (right, top) made history on “American Ninja Warrior.” Mo'ne Davis made history, too, earning a win in the Little League World Series.

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SAN ANTONIO — It's been quite a summer for feminine feats of athleticism.

Kacy Catanzaro becomes the first woman to qualify for the “American Ninja Warrior” competition. Becky Hammon, a WNBA All-Star, becomes assistant coach with the NBA champion San Antonio Spurs. Mo'ne Davis, 13, becomes the first girl to earn a win in Little League World Series history.

How cool, and how timely.

This week, kids will be heading back into the classroom and into the world of schoolkid stress — playground bullies, frenemies and the ever-popular clique wars.

They're all still around from our day, albeit with new social media twists to keep the pecking-order pecking going long after school's out.

In addition, there's the relatively new standardized testing stress, which seems to freak some kids out so much that they get sick so as to avoid the whole thing.

It's enough to drive a kid to drink lots and lots of Big Red. While texting gripes to his best friend. Or while destroying an enemy army online. All modern modes of stress relief that might make a kid feel better about things she can't control but that ultimately miss the point.

Sports, on the other hand, are an empowering confidence builder. It's true for boys, but especially true for girls, who are being Katy Perry-ed to the -nth degree despite modern feminism.

Not that there's anything wrong with wanting to roar like Perry, but girls who get sprained ankles from the rock wall and blisters on their hands from the monkey bars are less likely to get pushed around than those who write songs about how they're not going to let anyone push 'em around.

And while it's par for the course to encourage boys to go out and get sweaty, even today little girls aren't given the same carte blanche to walk in the house smelling like a wet dog.

Some of the greatest highs of my younger years came from the CYO softball field behind Aggie Park, where I would pick off girls trying to steal second with powerful throws from home plate.

Maybe it became such a high because it balanced out the fact that I was a terrible runner; one coach said he'd have timed me running the bases if he'd had a calendar. But I could throw fast and hard, and I figured out which girls fancied themselves fast enough to steal. The high-fives and way-to-gos from my teammates made me feel like a superhero.

There is no gender division in savoring a hard-earned victory or getting over a humiliating defeat; everyone has to learn that for most people, winning is less common than losing. Understanding that a loss is no excuse to give up is a life lesson.

All of which is why focusing on Catanzaro, Hammon and Davis is important.

It shows us that athleticism — and the fitness, tenacity and strength of character that define it — isn't just a masculine trait.